Ogu and the Secret Forest - Switch Review
"The best Zelda-like I’ve played in a couple of years"
Ogu and the Secret Forest immediately caught my eye. Its cartoony art style and top-down perspective instantly had me thinking of 90s RPG classics. Therefore, I was delighted to receive a pre-play code for our review; Ogu and the Secret Forest is out on 29th April 2025 and looks extremely cute!
That Nintendo charm that many of its first-party titles have is famously impossible for third-party studios to replicate, as hard as they might try. However, from afar, Ogu and the Secret Forest certainly looks like a Nintendo title, but does it play as well as one?
The Good
In Ogu and the Secret Forest, you play as the titular character, who is a small, fluffy… duck, I think? Whatever he is, he bounces through the game world trying to gather up the pieces of the Great One’s power, which have been scattered hither and thither. The pieces are in six different worlds that you must explore, and they all tie back to Baby Ogu’s Hometown. Along his journey, Baby Ogu meets lots of tribe-like groups and various animals who assist him on the quest. Hats play a large part in the gameplay as well (like the masks in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask) and each one provides some kind of ability that strengthens Baby Ogu or contributes to the quests; each hat feels unique and meaningful in its own way.
Ogu and the Secret Forest is also stacked in pretty much everything else you’d expect and want to see in a Zelda-like. We have fishing, side quests (lots of them!), secrets, dungeons, and more. For anyone like me who likes to wander off the main path and sink numerous hours into extraneous tasks, then Ogu and the Secret Forest will be right up your street. Some may call it filler, but I call it good value for money!
I already said it was cute, but Ogu and the Secret Forest is just so endearing I feel it needs another mention. When Baby Ogu’s health is below 50%, he can dance, yes dance, to heal himself back up to 50% again. I’m not really sure why I felt the need to tell you all that other than that it’s adorable. Ogu and the Secret Forest is just packed with these moments and coupled with the lovely hand-drawn graphics, it all plays out like a beautiful children’s book. Think the Gruffalo meets Zelda—enough to make a grown man weep.
TL;DR
- Classic RPG structure
- Faithful Zelda-like gameplay
- It’s all just terribly cute
The Bad
Ogu and the Secret Forest has been out on other platforms for a few months, and it seems it got some criticism for its difficult-to-navigate menus. I’m not sure if they’ve made some quality-of-life changes for the Nintendo Switch because I’m pleased to say I found the menus fine. The in-game map, however, does seem to be a hangover from this criticism; I found it really confusing to navigate (despite looking beautiful) and often found it hard to work out how the various parts of the game world are connected. In an RPG a good map is a crucial tool for any explorer and in Ogu and the Secret Forest it felt like a bit of a miss.
Ogu and the Secret Forest also wasn’t without its performance issues. I had a few crashes, including one where the screen went dark red for about a minute before eventually crashing. It was all a bit creepypasta… but on a serious note, it was very annoying. Baby Ogu also often gets stuck on various nooks and crannies in the environment, even if just for a couple of seconds on a tree for example. In a game that involves a lot of moving from A to B, this was an unnecessary inconvenience.
TL;DR
- Confusing in-game map system
- Some performance issues and crashes
Final Score: 8/10
Not afraid to imitate its inspiration, the developers of Ogu and the Secret Forest have clearly gone whole hog and decided to just make a Zelda game but with a cute little duck as the main character, but who’s complaining!
Ogu and the Secret Forest is the best Zelda-like I’ve played in a couple of years, and as long as you’re not put off by anything too cutesy Ogu and the Secret Forest is a must-have for any fans of the classic series.
Thank you for checking out our Ogu and the Secret Forest Switch review, thank you to Sinkhole Studio for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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